9/25/19

Re-organizing and drawing strategy with my approaches to accounts.  Everything is a prospect, and diminish the emphasis of having a focus now.  Geographically yes I think it’s advantageous to have a focus area, but that’s not to say an AE or other like-sales rep should dismiss other areas.

2:32pm, and writing emails.  Using a current template, but I will re-write. Thinking of myself as a sales teacher.  Well, eventually.  This is my template, my training and playing ground.  Test everything.

102 degrees outside.  Hoping over hoping that class tonight is somehow cancelled.  Somehow.

Started a book last night, a narrative prompted from last night’s lecture.  Approaching all of this, this in the AE position, like a professor.  No, a teacher.  Let’s say I had to teach someone how to sell… what’s the first forward of instruction I would utter?  “Say hi.” Greet the person.  Don’t talk about your product, service, or you.  Learn about them.  And note, reader, that this is a note to self, with throws of growling intent to intensify the transactional momentum of my presence here.  Not just a sale here, a sale there, but a belt of signings.  Change everything, and however many times I’ve written that before doesn’t matter.  The aim of this project changes….  Today, Day 54.  Not much time to adjust or re-adjust.  The Account Executive is about more than transacting, or even relationships.  But nearness, communication, accessibility.

This position is reminding me of sales thoughts and musings I’d have in the vineyard when at Roth, walking the SB lot, like that morning I was walking the last few rows and decided I’m done with a full-time fold in the wine world.  I wanted more.  I found Sonic, then ten months into Sonic I found this set of pages.  So… get more professor-like…. Write a book on how to do this while learning to.  ONE, no self-doubt.  Absolutely not allowed.  TWO, write everything down.  Everything you learn, everything you think, everything you want.  THREE, keep conversation perpetual, tireless, and creative.

In these remaining 46 days, starting the other journal Mom bought me.  The larger one, leather-covered with the Apache blessing on it reading “May the breeze blow new strength into your being.”  About what will I note, exclusively… how to do this.  How to be an Account Executive, or “successful” at selling.  Not a corny how-to, and not a Death of a Salesman connect.  But my pages, how I made this work, how I made it mine.

FOUR, be your own agency.  Write your aims, sights, weaknesses, areas of study….  WORK.

Tirelessly.

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Looking for more conversations….  I’m thinking far too much, I know.  So bad that I’m writing how much I’m thinking which is even more counter-everything.  Productive, intuitive….

2:16pm.  MY job is prospecting, funnel building and not how those Facebook infomercial, pseudo-guru types talk.  No… this is a collective communication that strays and sways any way it may.  I follow the talk, keep it alive however I can.  Productivity yes but a sped and rich movement from result to result and deliverable to deliverable.  I’m studying work, what I do here at Sonic, and all this is, any sales position really, but this AE act most notably is avoiding silence however you can.

Words always present, always movement. Always aims and targets, a consistency of embodiment.  Work, knowing Now, FREED.  Me.. finally.  The wine industry could never produce this.

Feeling the 7-mile run from lunch.  Want some cold brew coffee, a sparkling water.  Will walk to back room, pause for a sec.  Know my topic, finally.  Not wine, not even writing, but WORK. Right here, in this chair, with these post-it’s, this pen and journal.

Keep talking, keep meeting and connecting.

First sip of cold brew and I’m rebuilt.

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Thoughts, and a Question…

Thinking more and more about business and prospecting, building or growth if you would, and how many ways there are to do it.  More than I can cascade here, obviously, but everything stretches from one principle.  Conversation.  And, genuine, heartfelt conversation at that.  No intention to convert, or sell, just knowing the person, knowing them better.  Right now, I’m calling, from a list of existing prospects.  Now, calling already has the not so much assumed but anatomical and definite insinuation of sale, or at the very least marketing.  I’m doing my best to just de-charge the call.  Call to say hi, and check in.

What do you do, when prospecting?  Do you call?  And if you do, how do you approach?

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A Walk to the Front Door

Words, having conviction.  Conviction is not only what “sells”, but what proves memorable.  First sip of coffee, off. Off into the journal, on the Road.  Was thinking something yesterday, about travel and moving, movement.  But the specifics are lost on me this morning.  Plan for today is simple—Calls.  Speak on Sonic, speak on ideas, ideas for businesses, and writing–  THAT’S IT.  Yesterday someone messaging me, asking me if I want to go on a writing adventure with them.  They concerned about being a good writer, they don’t know writing well, they’ve been told for years that their writing isn’t mighty.  I tried my best to quell their concerns and anxieties.  I urged them to just write.  Then I told myself that I need do the same.  Today at lunch, writing and reading.  Writing about my reading.  After receiving the message last night while tasting some 2016 Landmark Pinot which surprised me with its attractive act and tap, I saw Jack upstairs in his room beginning his new Harry Potter book.  Can’t remember the title, which one it is in the series, but the thick one.  Or the most meaty, weighty page stack I’ve seen him bring home to day.  I thought the reading and writing adventure are, or should be, always in helix.

Not sure I was even walking to the front door of the building, after parking.  Felt like I was floating.  I nearly hovered past the door.  Why.  What’s causing this meditation about my character and in my inner voices.  There’s like, I don’t know, a student and professor chant about the morning. I’m learning, with a learning curve that doesn’t indicate any compromise or handicap.  Now that I’m through the door and in the building, I’m moving.  This Mike Madigan knows what he wants but doesn’t know too much about it.  Hence, I suppose, the nature to this project.  On this 6th step of it.  What now, and to where.

The wine last night put my visions and meditations in a number of noted tumbles, forcing more thought and words, conviction in wine.  Chardonnay and Pinot, and whatever else.  The conversation around me currently interrupts the inner recital.  Wish people would just be quiet, but they’re doing their job, and well at that, what I should be doing.  Okay, I say to self.  Note everything, like one of the people talking now that minces my concentration.  He showed me a photo log of sites that he’s inspected and where installs have been transpired.  I was daunted by his photos, not just by how many there were, but the variation and expanse of focus.  Am I aiming to be the top sales person in this division, I thought last night with the Pinot?  No.  Not necessarily.  But I will make an impression, or have my story read.  Not so much a story on sales, but doing something different.  Writer in a tech office.  Often I sense some quake in my character grieving, “I don’t want to write about that….” Or “Don’t write about Sonic.” But ever, that’s all I think about.  This new character, the new story.

A thousand words, Friday’s beginning.  Have to send flight plan, as I call it, to Mark.  Then, off into day.  Prospecting, yes, but building… story.  The story and how I write this new story is how “success” will be gripped.  Appetite for associate words and sentences, more pages in these business cards, this messy work area that I wish somehow I could find time to organize. May come in on Sunday, before winery. Shit… forgot to bring new journal.  Wonder if they have any here, like the ones I see Tasha with, or other people in Marketing.  Checked, and no.  No matter. There are legal pads, and I swear to not start as I have in the not so removed past where I begin penning on one and don’t reach the last page.  Remembering that movie, Crashing, where the writer only used legal sheets, writing on the couch of those two English students. Miss being a student, miss going to class and writing, having something to turn in. Then why not do it again?  Okay….  I’m a student.  Studying, well, THIS.  The Now.  Tasha told me those little journals were from a TedX event years ago, and they’re all being used or have been used.  I have legal sheets,   Elephantine plains that want my words, or I’m telling myself they do.

Reading Road again, as I noted the other day.  And already it strikes me differently.  Not just with Dean in how he’s presented, but the narration and how it always returns to Dean.  That is the singularity.  He is Sal’s Road, even when he’s not on page, or at all in a chapter.  Reading now as my son does his Potter manuscripts.  Just thought, while reading a bit of Road that I should use the blog as my notebook. I don’t need another legal pad.  Already have one on desk, to right next to elbow under a little notepad.  Need more coffee. Already.

Projects beginning to surface.  Wondering how much more writing I’d have to page if I ceased using paper.  Apart from the legal pad.  Or, what if I decommissioned that, too?  More space on desk…. Post-it’s under forearms.  One of them reading, “Before you write—Where are you and what are you doing?  In one word, and ideally one syllable.” Think.  See.  I’m seeing where I want to go in this AE walk.  Keep everything simple.  Say less, listen more.  One project, one word, Sales.  How it should never be sales, how what so many want to do is convert before contributing to a conversation, a new association and relationship.  Right after I walked through the door this morning, I told myself, “Today, no selling.” When I call down these lists, I notice myself getting at times unsettled, or anxious.  And I’m not even on the call yet much less through the door talking about what we can do for them.  No selling.  Just call and say HI.  That’s it.

8/9/19

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7/8/19

Busy day.  Caught self overthinking a bit ago.  But resolved.  Don’t think.  Just move, act, create.

Going shopping for some new work articles, then home for dinner, little writing and bed early.  Tomorrow a 4am-er. Told Abraham I’d be there, and more than that I WANT to be there.  For me.  Try for 9 miles.  Then the next day, the next, and all remaining.

Rest of day planned to not any kind of boring degree.  Hear people around me in leave mode, but I’m still in the propelled personification I had this morning. Work, as an idea, and one stretching from wine.  I think about all the work that involves in winemaking, how strenuous it is, the early rises but even more than that, the containment, more than focus or fixation, but IT.  The IT to it all.  All this.

Setting out running uniform, or not uniform but you know what I mean, tonight.  Shoes out, untied, phone charged, headphones, everything.  If I can, leave before 4 like I did that one time.

Phone at desk set up, voice message and my name for in-office comm.  Only minutes from leave.  Day for tomorrow more or less planned.  Meeting in morning, out in Field later in day and for most of the day’s remainder.

Put trash cans out.  Can’t forget to do that… not that exciting a detail but one with which everyone is familiar.  In bed before ten, the aim.  Going over to-do plate, not so much a list just a bunch of slop on a plate.

4:50, been chewing this gum since before the meeting we just had, which started at 3 and Shannon and myself nearly missed having lunch out right before.  Work versus time.  How to approach, how to consider, how to be place and put-together as character, for character and story.

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Minutes before team gets here.  Selling everything like I do wine, I tell myself about something I have approaching.  Selling should never be selling as I’ve noted in the past, in recent entries and if not then recent writings.  Genuine, present, connected communication.  Telling the story while listening to someone else’s narrative and deeply considering that.  An interaction but more.  More rich and textured talk.  Thinking of how the wineries I’ve worked at in the past, and other jobs, how their intention and focus on the sale, on conversion, is far too obvious.

I’ve now elected to embody new motion, a new beat for the purpose of building business and selling.  And that is to do anything but. Talk to people, meet them, know them better than I know what I’m representing.  Wine is life, and I sell life, if anything.  How incredible it is to be here, PRESENT, and with the opportunity to know people, know what they want, help them get there… to their There.

Not many people like to be sold, or want to be.  They want to be happy, they want to enjoy the moment, the conversation.  That’s my focus, their enjoyment of the interaction.  Still developing these notes, but I am developing them and playing with approaches and methods of doing so.  So…. Off into the Field and day, where I put such to practice.

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